Walker, D and Lloyd-Walker, B (2012) Understanding early contractor involvement (ECI) procurement forms. In: Smith, S D (ed.) Proceedings of 28th Annual ARCOM Conference, 3-5 September 2012, Edinburgh, UK.
Abstract
It is widely accepted that contractors have much potential valuable advice to offer at the front-end of project development. This concept is sometimes called early contractor involvement (ECI) and encompasses various relationship-based project procurement (RBP) forms. These are currently being globally adopted and adapted and at times this results in misunderstanding of the finer grained nuances between the forms. This often results in participants having unrealistic expectations of team behaviours and relationships between project parties, particularly what is expected of the project manager and lead sponsor accountable for project delivery. Unrealistic expectations may trigger perceived project failure. This lack of understanding of behavioural expectations of ECI form inhibits those who deliver projects from performing to expectation. Clients choosing an ECI project procurement form would benefit from a clearer definition of behavioural expectations. This paper attempts to set a conceptual behavioural framework for ECI that helps us better establish a way of understanding what ECI and RBP procurement forms offer.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | project alliances; early contractor involvement; relationship-based procurement |
| Index terms: | relationship-based procurement, project alliance, early contractor involvement, project party, project failure, project manager, project development, project procurement, project delivery |
| Subjects: | sociology, contractual arrangements, project delivery, profession, project completion |
| Topics: | Project Management, Procurement, Roles and Professions, Stakeholder Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 2 PC |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here